Monongalia Mirror

Monongahela and Ravenswood Railroad.

The following article is copied from the Fairmont True Virginian, and is worthy of an attentive perusal. We are gratified to perceive a waking up along the line of the proposed Railroad.

It will be seen that there is a want of concurrence in the date of the proposed Convention at Fairmont. This should be promptly attended to.

We invite attention to the following communication on the subject of the proposed railroad from the Pennsylvania line to Ravenswood. This communication was written by one of the oldest and most prominent men in our county, and whose mind is of an eminently practical turn. He evidently understands his subject.

The suggestions in this article will no doubt be acted upon by our people. There are many reasons why even those of us who live on the line of the Baltimore road should desire to have another railroad. At present, however, we do not propose to mention any of them. We only wish now to ask the readers' attention to the communication in question, which contains much food for reflection:

To the Editor of the True Virginian:

Dear Sir: I have learned that while we are quiet and manifesting but little interest in behalf of the contemplated railroad from the Pennsylvania line along the valley of the Monongahela river to, or near the mouth of the Great Kanawha on the Ohio river, others not more interested are active and using the usual means to attract public attention and public interest in its behalf. In Mason and Jackson counties they are about holding public meetings preparatory to the assembling of a general convention at your town (Fairmont) on the fifteenth day of June next, at which time and place it is expected certainly that the seven or eight counties through which said road is proposed to be made will be fully represented. May we not also hope that the city of Philadelphia will have time between this and the fifteenth of June to see and feel that her people have a deep
I feel a deep interest in the construction of the Monongahela and Ravenswood railroad. The State of Pennsylvania has already granted a charter for a railroad branching from her central railroad at Latrobe in Westmoreland county, and extending to the Virginia line: thus, with our railroad charter, giving to Philadelphia an opportunity of building a railroad to the Ohio river, at a point where the navigation will be good nearly at all times, and at a point some one hundred and fifty miles below the termination of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad at the city of Wheeling, and sixty miles below the termination of the Northwestern railroad, now being constructed to Parkersburg, thus giving to the city of Philadelphia an advantage over all the northern cities in their competition for the trade and travel from and to the Mississippi valley, if she will but embrace it. And I have no doubt but that far-seeing city will not hesitate to engage heartily in consummating this great work when the attention of her people shall be called to it, when she shall be fully advised of the facilities of making this road, its terminus, the facilities of connecting with like improvements to be constructed in Kentucky and Ohio, and the country through which it will pass. It, sir, is known to be the best lands and most flourishing part of Western Virginia along this line, passing as it were through the very core of Northwestern Virginia. The length of this road in Virginia will be between one hundred and seventy-five and two hundred miles.

The larger part of this route has been surveyed and leveled, so long as 1819 I believe, by an engineer of the name of Moore: to wit, from the Pennsylvania line to the mouth of Stone Coal creek in the county of Lewis—a distance of one hundred and three miles. The fall in the river, it appears by that survey (which may be found in the report of the Board of Public Works of that or the preceding or the following year,) was ascertained to be two hundred and six feet—averaging two feet per mile, and showing that in no single mile is the fall greater than three feet and nine inches. The country between the mouth of Stone Coal creek and the Ohio has not been surveyed, but I understand that there are few or no obstacles in the way, and that at most there will not be more than two short tunnels necessary to be made on the whole route, and that its whole length, as before stated, will be along the valleys of rivers and creeks that have fine valleys for making the road on, at a grade less probably than the grade of any other road in the United States, of the same length, constructed now or that is now being constructed.

The convention to be called on the fifteenth of June to meet at Fairmont I am pleased to say, is the act of our friends in the counties on the Ohio river; and they promise to come by battalions. Shall not our people now take a lively interest in the action of that convention? and will not our neighbors of our old mother county (Monongalia) be on the alert? and let me ask how it will be with the enterprising people of Fayette county, Pa. will they not be here at the convention by regiments?

Let us hear from the people of Uniontown. It will be her voice that will be soonest hearkened to by the city of Philadelphia.

I am, sir, now an old man, who has been reared up in the county of Marion—who, although sixty years old, yet feels a deep interest in the prosperity of the country, and who would if he could make his voice heard from the Ohio river along this line to the city of Philadelphia.

MARION.